for these huge corporate companies, so people haven't perceived that it can be applied to a house or an apartment occupi
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The Village in Centurion, a typical popular product which IHS develops.
Defining the Edge The industry has seen a trend of projects going green and being certified green for Excellence in Design for Greater Efficiencies (Edge), we chat to the International Finance Corporation (IFC)’s Lenore Caincross, to find out why this is and why the sudden move to go green affordably? By Ntsako Khosa | All images courtesy IFC
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dge is a green building programme and certification initiated by the IFC. It predicts what the performance of the building will be. “It was created as part of the World Bank’s Group pillars for their overall strategy. Climate features prominently and Edge was created out of that climate initiative,” says Edge Africa lead, Lenore Caincross. Climate impacts heavily in developing or emerging countries and those households contribute about 20% of their expenditure towards utility bills. With Edge they can reduce this expenditure, which directly links to low income homeowners. “Edge was born out to democratise green buildings and provide something especially for emerging markets,” she says. Going green in the past was perceived as expensive and only for the elite, however the Edge tool breaks those barriers showing that being efficient in terms of water, electricity and building material doesn’t necessarily have a huge price tag. Cairncross says that this perception has also been fuelled by the current green building standards. “Most standards are for commercial buildings, it’s been for these huge corporate companies, so people haven’t perceived that it can be applied to a house or an apartment occupied by regular people,” she elaborates. Moving to green homes reaches a larger amount of people as opposed to just a small portion of society.
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GREEN AFFORDABLE HOMES IN SOUTH AFRICA
The IFC is a global company and the Edge tool is a global standard focused in eight countries all over the world. “We’ve reached 130 countries where the tool is currently being used but the focus countries are Vietnam, the Philippines, Indonesia, India, Columbia, Ghana, South Africa and Costa Rica,” she says. South Africa was one of the first countries where Edge was introduced in terms of the global programme. “We’ve seen that Edge has helped many developers to go the green route where it may not have been possible before in terms of costing and accessibility. It’s also helped them to create an enabling environment for going green,” Cairncross says. Selecting countries that could go green was done by looking at construction industry growth as well as if there was a growing demand for green projects and an existing organisation that could assist in implementation. Cairncross shares that the biggest uptake within the housing sector is in the affordable housing industry. A large construction industry coupled with a huge demand for housing and the Green Building Council of South Africa (GBCSA) saw the tool coming to our shores. “When we were first discussing it with the GBCSA there was a need on their side to have a rating tool that speaks specifically for the residential side as well.
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Edge certified Candlewood Crescent, Boksburg is developed by RPP Developments and funded by IHS.
There was a gap in the offering they had so we saw that as an opportunity to work together,” she says. The GBCSA is the IFC’s certifying partner, they certify all the applications/certifications on their behalf. “They would train the local auditors or experts, vet whatever projects we’d put through the system to reach the Edge standard. We work together with them to ensure they maintain the standard. They make it happen,” she says. Using the tool to see how efficient your project can be or is, is freely available. Cairncross says that anyone can go ahead and assess their project and see if it meets the standard. The reason for this is to make it more accessible. An efficient project has a water, energy and material saving of 20% respectively. “Obtaining a certificate does involve a cost because they would need to get an accredited professional to audit their project. However, it is a lower cost option than some of the other standards that are available,” she says. There is an overall sustainable development goal for South Africa and climate falls into that. South Africa plans to mitigate 614 metric tonnes of CO2 by 2030. “By building green houses that are Edge certified and compliant they would be able to help reduce those emissions to help meet the target South Africa is aiming for,” she says. A World Green Buildings Trends report released in 2016 reveals that about half of local developers are thinking of certifying at least 60% of their projects by 2018. Plus, research into climate investment opportunities in emerging markets conducted by the IFC identifies that there is an investment potential for green buildings close to USD7-billion (R100-trillion) over the next few years.
GETTING CERTIFIED
There are two processes that a developer goes through to get certified – a pre-construction certification and a postconstruction certification. “During the pre-phase we’ll look at the plans and see whether your building design is going to meet the standard and run that through the online app.
Once it’s been constructed they’d look at the sample and check that you have available documentation to show that what is on the plans matches the constructed building,” says Cairncross. It is important that the certification is incorporated into the planning and design phases of the project. She says that it can become tricky to add green items to a design that didn’t cater for this initially. The tool isn’t an operational performance standard so once it’s certified, it’s certified. The IFC is looking at a recertification process after five years. “What has come out in some of the early projects that were certified, is that the installation of smart meters on site, to track performance, found that performance was actually better than predicted,” she says. “We are in the process of collecting further data to show what the real savings are,” she adds. The green app is one of the few online efficiency tools that gives you a payback calculator. It looks at the cost of the business case, which is the project, and estimates the overall cost of going green looking at utility costs and leaving you with a payback period. “In some of the initial projects the additional cost for going green has been between 1 and 3% and a payback period of about two years or less. In some projects it’s even been as low as 0.5%,” she says. Rating criteria involves following the standards stipulated in the South African National Standards (SANS) 10400 building regulations. Incorporating measures to be efficient are quite simple, things such as low flow faucets or showerheads, LED lighting, natural ventilation, insulation, reducing window to wall ratio, solar water heating, building materials and greywater harvesting among others. “Greywater harvesting is more and more important in a water scarce country, now everyone is looking at how to save water. Building an Edge certified home is one way of preserving water,” she says. When developers put in the criteria for their project they realise that they’re already meeting the standard or are very close to that. “It’s just a few tweaks that they need to make,” she says.
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Edge certified Tygerberg 3, student residence developed by STAG African.
ADOPTING GREEN STANDARDS
The greatest barrier that they’ve had to overcome is the cost perception of going green. Introducing the idea to developers hasn’t been a difficult task as they have experienced early adopters of the initiative, Cairncross says that this is because they can see the returns when using the app. “What has been interesting is there have been developers who have been keen to go green, but what has helped to increase market awareness as well as early adoption is financiers who decide to go the Edge route,” she says. Some of these market leading institutions include International Housing Solutions (IHS) and Old Mutual Alternative Investments. Many of the development financial institutions are seeking to see a climate mitigation as well as green developments. Cairncross shares that sourcing funding from these institutions may be difficult if the project isn’t green, commercial institutions are also jumping on the bandwagon. She adds that because multi-lateral institutions require green buildings this additionally incentivises the implementation of Edge. Currently, the IHS has registered about 3 000 housing units with the potential to register 7 000 more units. Old Mutual has a pipeline of 6 000 units with the first few 100 registered and a little under 1 000 pending. “Balwin has an estimated 1 500 already registered units and a further 7 000 are pending,” says Cairncross. Overall the IFC has about 5 000 housing units that are already Edge registered. “We have about 16 500 pending registrations. “As more developers see that this is the way for new developments we believe that there’ll be a much bigger uptake,” she predicts. There are benefits of going green for tenants, homeowners and developers. The end-user gets to save on utility bills. “We know that, especially in the affordable housing market, people will move for the difference of two or three hundred rands. It means it’s actually a significant impact on their income and disposable household income,” she says. Because green homes are gaining so much traction, Cairncross says that this opens opportunity for a potential development of green mortgages or bonds, “where banks could consider those additional savings and then structure a green mortgage bond that could perhaps change the affordability criteria allowing the client to afford a slightly bigger home,” she says. Financial institutions that invest in a portfolio of Edge certified housing units have the benefit of operational
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savings in the long term. “They also have a differentiator in the market as the home will be costeffective for the end-user. It does give them a unique selling point to say that the home is green as well as being able to access funding that would be otherwise inaccessible,” she adds.
CREATING THE MARKET
Partnering with the GBCSA has helped the IFC connect to members who are developers Lenore Cairncross, or who may be looking at Edge Africa Lead at IFC. building or contracting a developer to do so. “We’re making them aware of what’s possible with Edge. We’ve spoken to many developers and architects,” says Cairncross. Their strong focus on training has led them to bring in architects, quantity surveyors and the technical team so that when they design a project they add a green perspective to the mix. “We’re also working with the GBCSA on partnering with educational institutions to connect with students to make them aware of green building practices and their implementation, especially when designing,” she says. So, when they enter the workplace it’s part of the toolkit that they have. A recent initiative involved a competition at the University of Cape Town (UCT) where students were given the opportunity to use the app to see how they could make a particular set of houses efficient with the lowest cost. “The prize was a ticket to go to the GBCSA convention in Cape Town,” she says.
EDGING ALL BUILDINGS
Edge can be applied across various building types such as hotels, retail outlets and hospitals. “In South Africa it’s applied to housing but globally it’s across various building types,” she explains. They are currently in discussion with the GBCSA on implementing it across the board to commercial, retrofit, refurbished and existing buildings locally. “We hope that it’s going to become the norm and that this will just be the way that everyone builds in future,” she says.
